And if
you ask me----"
Mrs Weston stopped for a moment, nodding her head up and down, to
emphasize the importance of what she had said, and to raise the
expectations of Mrs Antrobus to the highest pitch, as to what was
coming.
"And if you ask me where I think she was going and what she was going
to do," she said, "I believe she was going out to lunch and that she
was going to one of those houses there, just across the road, for she
made a bee-line across the green towards them. Well, there are three
houses there: there's Mrs Quantock's, and it couldn't have been that,
or else Mrs Quantock would have had some news of her, or Colonel
Boucher's, and it wouldn't have been that, for the Colonel would have
had news of her, and we all know whose the third house just there is."
Mrs Antrobus had not completely followed this powerful reasoning.
"But Colonel Boucher and Mrs Quantock are both here, eh?" said she.
Mrs Weston raised her voice a little.
"That's what I'm saying," she announced, "but who isn't here whom we
should expect to see, and where's his house?"
It was generally felt that Mrs Weston had hit the nail on the head.
What that nail precisely was no one knew, because she had not explained
why both Olga Bracely and Georgie were absentees. But now came the
climax, bang on the top of the nail, a shrewd straight stroke.
"So there she was having her lunch with Mr Georgie," said Mrs Weston,
now introducing this name for the first time, with the highest dramatic
art, "and they would be seeing round his house afterwards.
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